With only about a week and a half remaining until the huge ACL festival starts on the 8th of this month, it’s time that you really start thinking about that plan of action for who you want to see over the weekend. Sometimes your choice will be easy with only one decent band playing at a certain time, but then you’ll have a choice like this one that will make you want to pull your hair out. So on the one hand you have The Flaming Lips who formed over 25 years ago and have been doing their psych rock thing for longer than most of us can remember. But then we have a more recent favorite in Band of Horses who can still hold their own despite their relatively short career together. Both bands are playing on Sunday late in the day at 6pm on opposite sides of the festival, so you have little hope of catching a bit of both sets. My initial feeling was to go with Band of Horses based on my just having seen Flaming Lips at Free Press Summer Fest earlier this summer. Plus, I feel like The Lips are still using the same damn live gimmicks that they’ve been hitting us with for the last 5-6 years… I mean cool, but I’ve seen it more than once. Then again, Flaming Lips play right before The National on back to back stages so it would be nice to just post up and avoid fighting the crowds. I also fear that the Band of Horses crowd could be old hippie city since The Eagles play on the same stage shortly after BOH. My indifference towards the recent material from both of these bands may cause me to just go with a majority vote amongst my friends. Care to share your thoughts?
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So it’s time to wrap up our ACL festival coverage finally and I thought a great way to do that would be too look at my favorite things from the weekend. Now we’ve already posted our thoughts on the best bands from the weekend so I’ll stay away from repeating myself about my favorite acts. I would however like to touch on a couple things I noticed this year that really stood out as good moves on the part of festival planners and promoters. You might even see a knock or two about how said things could be made even better… Follow the jump for full list.